Jeyup S. Kwaak

Reporter, The Wall Street Journal.

Jeyup S. Kwaak is a general news reporter for The Wall Street Journal based in Seoul, South Korea. He covers South Korean and North Korean politics, economy, society and culture. Follow Jay at @kwaakreports.

The U.S. and South Korean militaries said Tuesday they will begin their annual joint winter drills in South Korea on March 2, a regular source of tension with North Korea. The exercises are some of the largest on the calendar, involving hundreds of thousands of American and South Korean troops. The drills involve computer simulations as well as field exercises,...

Tour operators that take groups into North Korea are banking on an Ebola-related quarantine being lifted soon. While no official indication of such a move has come yet from Pyongyang, the agencies have opened their websites for tour bookings again.

One of North Korean state media’s raisons d’être is to praise the country’s self-proclaimed status as a socialist paradise. A recent addition to the propaganda machine’s repertoire is a series on plastic surgery operations fully funded by the state.

Hyundai Motor Group has proposed to build South Korea’s tallest skyscraper in Seoul, surpassing a nearby tower currently under construction by conglomerate Lotte Group. The capital city’s government said Saturday that the proposed Hyundai building would house the company’s headquarters and rise to 571 meters (1,873 feet), making it one of the tallest in the world. It would also be...

Has a young South Korean man joined the Islamic State? It’s a subject that’s been generating a lot of media coverage in the last few days. According to South Korea’s foreign ministry, an 18-year-old South Korean citizen entered Turkey on Jan. 15 and two days later disappeared at a town called Kilis, about 3 miles away from the Syrian land...

Following the terror attacks in Paris earlier this month that killed more than a dozen people, public debate on free speech and its limits has taken place worldwide. South Koreans have remained relatively quiet on the issue, however, with some media observers lamenting an apparent indifference to the freedom of speech.